Planners OK environmental plan for high-rise downtown neighborhood

After five years of discussions, the Planning Commission approved an environmental plan Thursday for a new high-rise neighborhood in the heart of the city.

The commission also cleared the way for as many as six new towers of up to 850 feet, although each would be smaller than the 61-story, 1,070-foot-tall Transit Tower at First and Mission streets, which would become the tallest building in San Francisco.

“This is not about creating high-rises for the sake of high-rises,” said John Rahaim, the city’s planning director. “It’s about creating a high-density urban neighborhood.”

The high-density office and residential space in the new 145-acre Transit Center District also is needed to finance the new transit hub now under construction at the site of the former Transbay Terminal. The state gave the city a number of publicly owned parcels of land in the new district, with the understanding that they would be sold to pay for construction of the transit hub, which will serve bus, trolley and rail lines, along with the planned high-speed rail trains.

“This is not just about building the Grand Central Station of the West,” said Maria Ayerdi-Kaplan, executive director of the Transbay Joint Powers Authority, which manages the $4.2 billion project. “It’s about building a wonderful new community.”
Concerns about the project included worries that shadows from the skyscrapers would fall across playgrounds and parks as far away as Chinatown, which could violate shadow restrictions approved by voters in 1984.

While planning officials assured the commissioners that shadow questions could be dealt with when individual buildings come up for approval, that wasn’t enough for Commissioner Katherin Moore, who was the lone vote against approval of the environmental impact report.

But even Moore backed the plan to bring tens of thousands more people to an underutilized, transit-friendly part of the city.
“This plan is very solid and forward looking,” she said.